August Entry : The Tin Man's Map...

[tilt]

NI I say... NI
and I'm sorry to say so... but leaves just don't fall like that.. or at least don't stay like that.. they clump up due to wind and rain and so forth... but damn nice... my own entry seem rather inadequate..

[Crayons]

Don't get sorry - get even!!! LOL!
The leaves, yes, I know, I'm thinking about that problem. The leaves might look like that for a brief time if they all fell in wind and really hard driving rain that made them all stick to the ground. Huh. That's a real bogus line of BS if ever I wrote one! Seems to me I have to manually place another 30,000 leaves in clumps. That sounds like a spraygun effect. I might be able to do it with some custom brush thing in a graphics tool as post-processing but... first I think I'll try a 3D solution. Another height field, sprayed with dots, then detect those and put a leaf at each dot.
If you did that entry of yours so far in one sitting then I envy you the talent! Using 3D code still feels like artistic "cheating" to me but I just love seeing what happens! This has also taken rather considerably longer!! Never say die!

[Crayons]

OK, well, clumpy leaves..... a bit. I'll have to muck about with the spot reference png over the weekend and probably change the amounts spread evenly vs. clumped but the principle seems to work reasonably.

And, ah spit! - I only just noticed that the fir trees need fiddling with to stop that concentric circle effect.
Ah well.
This render also has anti-aliasing on for once.

[Crayons]

Right-oh!
I've done about everything I wanted (and more, thanks to everyone for their advice so far!).
This is a smaller render of what might be the final version of my BattleMap part of the challenge. I've added some chests/boxes, a bit of cloth, some tent bags etc as looted debris. It can be safely assumed that the original bandits made off with all the horses/mules and loaded them with all the good and smaller "stuff".
I'd gladly welcome any last advice about this section.
For example, the hexagon "Overlay" - I can tone it up or down, rescale it and so forth, I can even move it lower so that the taller parts of trees obscure it - which could be handy to indicate "impassable" areas. However, the trees would then shadow the hexes too. The hexagons are "40%" Grey which seems a balance between being able to see them on the "road" and being too contrasty for the fir trees. Dunno.
Does the sun need to be higher giving shorter shadows? Are the shadows too dark?
Happy to hear anything really!

As for the final "dual pic" with the "hand scrawled" map, I was considering just having them as 2 A4 elements one above the other - no border and no other text on the images. However I hope to accompany the final version with a load of "ideas" for campaign use.

[tilt]

I would say that the grid is way to dominating, it actually makes a lot of the graphics hard to see. Tone it down, and perhaps concider the scale. A normal scale for a battlemap would be 1sq = 5 feet ... this would make your carts rather big
Leaves looking much better ending in big piles at the edge of the road - much more natural - I still think there are too many on the road. If it had a storm the night before (as the puddle implies) then the leaves on the road would be drowned in mud only leaving a small percentage visible + those which have dropped since

[Steel General]

I'm with Tilt that the grid is a bit overwhelming. You might consider changing the color to white and lowering the opacity.

[Jaxilon]

you might try using brown and green on the grid if you can. Brown where it's over the road and green over the forested areas. I have never had a need to try that myself but it might help the look. It does sort of fight with the map for dominance the way it is.

[Crayons]

I had a feeling the grid was going to be an issue! LOL!
FYI, I'm a GURPS player so the hex grid scale is of the order of 1hex = 1m (or yd). That makes the cartwheel about 1m in diameter which has been my main "reference" point - approximately.
Both suggestions sound good - changing the colour of the hexes is trickier than messing with the opacity but it might be that the opacity change will greatly increase render time... I'll have a "play".
Less leaves? Yup, I can see that, no problem. That'll speed up the render too. (It's not onerous at the moment)

[Jaxilon]

Unless you can just export everything to Gimp or another similar thing and do the grid there.

WOOHOO for another GURPS player!

[Crayons]

Right! Time for the final version (except for the later versions when I change it all again.)
Besides, I feel a bit like I'm coming down with something so I might not feel like fiddling with it much more in the time remaining.
Thanks to everyone for their advice and ideas. I think the finished product is all the better for that.

As I think I mentioned before I took the challenge as the start of a campaign and an important aspect, I feel, is that that is all it does. The rest of the campaign is up to our prospective players and GM to sort out.

To reprise the information dotted around in this thread...

The Tin Man's Map

This is a deliberately "open" design for a Campaign start scenario. The GM is left with the majority of choices as to how to progress it. Some ideas are presented here.

The basic salient points are
a) the player characters stumble upon the scene in the battlemap.
b) they find the "map"

Battlemap
There has obviously been a fight here and the wagoneers lost. The scene has already been looted of horses and/or mules and all major expensive and/or small goods.
The GM needs to decide where to place any bodies and active combattants that might be around now.
It could be that the original brigands have returned to load up more booty on the horses. The carts themselves are largely useless to them as they won't pass between the trees around here. It may just be scavenging wolves or other itinerant looters (like the players?)

The fundamentals are that the Tin Man is some sort of trader from afar who has found a good supply of Tin somewhere. Tin is a rare commodity where he hails from and has traded 4 crates of Tin Ingots for gold (which is more abundant for him). He obviously intended to "make it big" taking this home. Clues to this could be identified by his tin "jewelry" and the use of gold in some everyday utensils that may remain. Perhaps the brigands did not believe that the mugs had real gold bands on them?

The Map
Is cheaply hand scribed and has seen some wear and more lately, some blood. It would most probably be found hidden in the Tin Man's robes. The language is obviously "foreign", ideographic in written form, and translators are probably scarce (if any) or perhaps a survivor remains. Some smiling little asiatic old woman stereotype??? There could still be a language problem.
Even then, the ideograms could be in "code" known only to the Tin Man.
The map "should" be read from bottom left to right then up "one" and left to right again, ending in the top right. The players should be able to work that out?
The map itself has some diagrams depicting possible perils (skull and crossbones, bows, axes, snakes etc) some of the more interesting elements are enlarged in adjacent copies ("stonehenge", rope bridge...). Crops, livestock and game are pictorially shown, perhaps to assist in smalltrading along the way?
Navigational aides are sometimes shown by the sun (either at sunrise or noon) or moon and an arrow. It might be that holding the map flat before you and aligning the sun/moon along the arrow might mean you are facing the correct direction? Sometimes the horizon is drawn at rightangle across the path to show a reference point to head for.
Finally - other things on the map warrant investigation? Maybe the little old dear can say a word that everyone recognises - and point... "Ygsdrason!" Nodding furiously! Lots of flapping arms...

The Tin Man himself?
Who is he?
Well he could just be a lone trader looking for "the big one".
There is a black symbol repeated twice on the side of his living wagon and on his banner on the goods wagon - even once on the map!(?). Is that just his trade symbol, or is it the symbol of something more powerful and, heaven's forbid, more sinister? Perhaps it's the symbol of some sort of Trader "tong" or the passport emblem for some "protection" organisation.
If the players decide to complete the Tin Man's trade (and it's likely to be very lucrative) by completing the journey with his carts, are they going to have to talk very fast to explain themselves? Perhaps the ingots all have this mark too?

Take it where you will...
### LATEST WIP ###


Technical bumf.
I apologise if it's in anyway grainy - it's a 25 factor compressed jpeg. It should work out as A3 when viewed at 300dpi.
S'all folks!